In late January/early February I went out on tour with Dave Hughes and Adam Bennett. Here’s a lovely video I made to document the tour:

I won’t bore you with a write up of it. I think the video shows that a good time was had by all. Easily my most successful tour to date and a great start to the year.

The band started the year existing only in theory after I fired Jon and Steve for being disloyal, and for joining in fun in a way that excluded their employer. In January I had two people lined up to replace them and by February we’d had our first practice and already nailed four songs. So, The Dead Set became Naomi (of Naomi Hates Humans/Mothers Opposed To The Occult and er Jesus & Tequila fame) on bass and new guy Johnny Yeates on drums (thanks to Mike Only and Johnny’s impressive totally shitfaced networking skills).

After only a few practices we played our first gig in Brighton:

Plans were then afoot for more gigs and some recording. Sadly though things slowed to a crawl, with Johnny unable to practice for a few months and then Naomi announcing that she was moving to New York. What is it with me and bass players feeling the need to leave the country rather than play in a band with me?

Anyhoo, so knowing the band was in limbo again, I set about recording, ultimately having Naomi, Johnny, Jon and Steve all helping out. Despite planning to have stuff done by now, what was meant to be a demo massively ballooned once I realised I could get a fairly decent sound from my DIY home studio set-up. Add to this learning everything as I go, and it’s dragged on. But it’ll be completed soon and most likely be a full album. Just my vocals to go now and hopefully I’ll have something ready for release early in the new year.

In between the recording, there was one more band gig. Naomi couldn’t make it and so I got Jon to step in on bass:

Not bad for a band that hadn’t rehearsed together at all.

So at the end of the year, the band has become a sort of loose group of musicians. Essentially, whoever’s around and willing to help. Fuck knows what’ll happen next year beyond releasing the recordings, but fingers crossed for a bit of stability in the line-up so we can gig and possibly do some more recording, maybe in a real studio.

That’s pretty much it. One more year. A few gigs and recording. Funny how easy it is to do a lot and have nothing to show for it! Honestly, I have been busy!

Yesterday, I discovered a rough edit of some footage of the final band practice with Jon and Steve. It dates back to December last year, when Jon had just announced that he was moving to Panama, which of course left me having to replace him in the band (and subsequently Steve too).

We had one final practice (which was actually after about 6 months of inactivity) and were going to play one last time together at a party. Sadly that didn’t happen since Steve got stuck abroad and couldn’t get back in time. I think it was the whole ash cloud thing. Or maybe he was actually denied entry for a bit for looking a bit too shifty…

Anyway, this is a short film of that final practice. A line drawn in the sand, marking the end of that period of Adam Boucher and The Dead Set. But hey, enough of my yacking, whaddaya say? Let’s boogie…

Probably my favourite Jim Lockey song… Enjoy.

Another video from the Brighton gig. Possibly the fastest this song has been played live so far. That’s not to say that it’s all that fast and we’re unlikely to morph into a speed metal outfit anytime soon, but y’know.

Anyway, for now, enjoy: